The psycho-social impact of unemployment and poverty

The social processes that act to marginalise "the other"^[1], those not connected to the centres of a society's power, also ensure that the burden of unemployment falls first and most heavily on "the other". 

Because employment is so fundamental in our work-centred societies to the maintenance of individual choice, self-esteem, and hope, its deprivation is a keenly felt blow and a source of constant personal stress and pain. 

Unemployment spreads unevenly and inequitably through society.  It is an acrid source of social discontent, fuelling increasingly disruptive and destructive retaliatory behaviour by the ethnic minorities and lower socio-economic groups most affected. 

Unemployment spreads from the bottom up and excludes those affected from the mainstream and aspirations of a consumerist society.  The lifestyle aspirations and expectations continually projected through the mass media^[2] become unattainable to an ever growing proportion of the population. 

The constant barrage of advertisements and programs showing beautiful people consuming conspicuously is a continual in-your-face reminder of a "normality" that is utterly beyond you.  This causes considerable personal stress, social alienation, apathy, loss of self-esteem, depression, ill-health, and anger. 

The stress cannot be relieved by the socially accepted means of gaining sufficient purchasing power through the sale of your labour because you are unemployed and have probably become largely unemployable. 

While many in the first generation of unemployed may well do little to help themselves, human nature^[3] will not allow such apathy and despondency to be carried over to the next generation.  In the second and subsequent generations of unemployed a profound change in social values, culture, and lifestyle aspirations occurs to accommodate the reality of permanent unemployment, underemployment, or, more generally, poverty. 

The "economic" sub-culture that develops in the unemployed underclass of a developed economy like Britain is not qualitatively different from the culture of poverty in urban Brazil or Peru. 

Those marginalised from the mainstream redefine the mainstream, a new mainstream, not just a new tributary.  This new mainstream includes them, but excludes the former mainstream and those associated with it.  The old mainstream and those who comprise it become the enemy "tribe", and inter-tribal behaviour and animosity^[4] takes root.  The dispossessed become active in ways that undermine the fabric of formal society. 

The official institutions of society, including the formal media, are increasingly by-passed by the members of the informal society: `You have ignored my needs and aspirations; you have left me without a viable path to self-improvement within the law; so I will now help myself'. 

Free-loading on the Welfare State and double-dipping on entitlements become the norm, without any intention of re-incorporating into mainstream life.  Loopholes on entitlements and the latest tricks to defraud welfare providers are instantly spread among the underclass that feigns not to understand rules and procedures.

An informal economy develops that ignores the paperwork and revenue requirements of the State.  Anarchic behaviour increases; purposeless nihilist crime and violence increase among those who have given up hope completely. 

Political activism increases.  If a nation's political system does not provide for the equitable participation of the underclass, terrorism will ensue.  Where a marginalised group has an extra-national identity, such as Islam, and perceives itself to be the victim of the prevailing World Order, their response will be global.

"Scratching the Merc", and other hostile acts directed against the persons and property of the official tribe become more prevalent, and are increasingly seen by members of the new tribe not as criminal, but as retributive, as fulfilling a moral obligation to one's peer group^[5].  Selling cocaine to the naive offspring of the well-to-do is poetic justice, and an indirect form of income redistribution. 

People who would otherwise not behave anti-socially, sally forth into enemy territory in the primordial tribal fashion; they destroy, rape, and pillage; and then return home to be caring and honourable individuals^[6].  They are joined and encouraged by genuinely criminal elements who exploit the deepening social malaise for their own ends. 

The growing underclass will not meekly accept its fate, and its ability to undermine formal society will increase as its numbers are augmented by more and increasingly able people.  As technology moves its way up the economic activity ladder displacing higher and higher orders of human labour, those displaced skills become available to the underclass. 

There will also be very able and ambitious individuals, not displaced from the workforce, who will see the opportunity for achieving power through the disaffected underclass.  

These processes will reach an advanced stage before formal society recognises the seriousness of the problem.  This is because those who control society; those with power, wealth, and influence; those whom the media serves, are able to insulate themselves very effectively from the growing underclass.  They are too busy working, and making money; running the formal society; being informed by the formal media about what the rest of formal society is thinking, doing, and buying; to notice or care what is happening in the informal society. 

The only real periodic pointers, and source of nagging disquiet, are the growing crime statistics and the rise of global terrorism.  When they finally do notice the full extent and seriousness of the problem, the elite will dig in and adopt a fortress mentality - perhaps because by that stage there will be little else left to do. 

Leaving the unemployed and the poor to their fate, perhaps in the perverse belief that it reflects a regrettable but natural order, is not an option - it does not make for a stable and sustainable world^[7].  Permanent and growing unemployment, and poverty, coupled with an increasing reluctance among the increasingly wealthy and shrinking minority of technocrats and capital owners to sustain the unemployed through taxation, will unravel society into an ungovernable anarchy. 

Under-employment, and poverty are indeed among the most serious social problems we face and require a paradigm shift^[8] to solve.